During his appearance on Cam’ron’s Talk With Flee podcast, J. Cole explained why he isn’t interested in talking about his altercation with Diddy at a 2013 MTV VMAs afterparty.
“There was a rumor… Did you ever scuffle with Puff before?” asked Cam around the 32-minute point of the podcast episode, which can be seen in full above. “Yeah, that actually happened,” Cole confirmed, but said that he wasn’t interested in explaining further. “Nah, you know what? I damn near wish I could, because it’s such an ill story. But, matter of fact, we did a podcast, me and [Ibrahim ‘E’ Hamad], like a year and a half ago. We kind of ran through the first part of my career up until Forest Hills Drive, and we had a bonus episode… about that night and that altercation.”
He said that he and Ibrahim, his manager, were gearing up to release a podcast episode about the altercation but the timing didn’t work out. He insisted that he and Diddy, who patched things up shortly after rumors of the altercation surfaced, had “no problem for years” by the point he and Ibrahim recorded the episode.
“We was gonna put it out, thinking like, ‘Yo, it’s cool, enough time has passed, he ain’t going to feel no way,’” he continued. “And then all the shit happened with him. I was just like, ‘Nah.’ It felt like damn near kicking a man when he’s down. It would have gave the news more ammo and the world more ammo to just destroy this dude. It wasn’t a good time. I want to tell [the story] because it’s ill, but it happened. … It did happen, but the stories be wrong. The narratives around it be wrong.”
Cole explained that he even heard that TDE’s Terrence ‘Punch’ Henderson told a version of what happened that doesn’t paint the full picture. “I’m like, ‘You got a lot of right, but you wasn’t really right there,’” he said. “‘So, either what you saying, you missing details or misrepresented some details.’ I know the story, and [Ibrahim] was right there, but I know the full, front-to-back [story]. … That’s a memorable night for me. I’m recalling that shit verbatim.”
When the incident was reported in 2013, sources alleged that Diddy, who was “visibly intoxicated,” attempted to confront Kendrick Lamar over his industry-disrupting “Control” verse. Diddy allegedly tried to pour his drink on K Dot, to which Cole intervened. The two rappers then physically clashed, according to eyewitnesses, who also said that their respective crews got involved. They later laughed off the incident in a video promoting Revolt, the company Diddy co-founded in 2013 and was later ousted from in 2023 amid sexual misconduct allegations.
In 2024, TDE’s Punch appeared on an episode of the R&B Money podcast and confirmed the incident happened. “The homie just did this song, right? Piss the gang of people off. Everybody was mad at it,” Punch said at the time, without naming names. We get to the club. One of the homies approached us and talking about this particular record. So we're going back and forth, ‘Oh, it's not personal. It's just this, this and that. It's cool, whatever, whatever.’ … Another one of the homies walk up, he look drunk [and] said, ‘Yeah, y'all n***as need to go back and forth and keep it on wax or whatever, whatever, whatever.’”
